


lay down your sweet and weary head

by Laora



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Hello I guess my headcanon for the ending is different from the consensus but I love it a lot OK, KH3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laora/pseuds/Laora
Summary: Sora, fading.[It’s been a month since he brought Kairi home, and every day that he wakes up is a miracle unto itself.]
Comments: 13
Kudos: 36





	lay down your sweet and weary head

**Author's Note:**

> _waltzes into fandom 15 years late_
> 
> Hello it's Laura back on her bullshit (and by bullshit I mean angst)
> 
> Look I see the possibility of a protagonist trying to hide from everyone he loves that he is slowly dying, and I gotta write it. I don't make the rules
> 
> Title is borrowed from Into the West, the song from Return of the King, because I have a lot of feelings

(“Sora, are you all right?”)

“You are too far gone,” the younger Xehanort told him, during his exam. “There’s nothing you can do to save yourself,” the elder said with a crooked, lethal smile.

He is dead anyway, and it was Kairi’s life on the line, and Sora is nothing without his friends, now is he?

It was never going to be a choice—not for him.

* * *

(“Of course I am!”)

Kairi is here, and that’s what’s important. _Kairi is here,_ when he watched her turn to stardust under Xehanort’s grasp, when he screamed, powerless, as her life slipped through his fingers like so many grains of sand.

Kairi is here, and Riku is here, and maybe the lightness in Sora’s chest is caused by his fading heart or maybe it’s caused by his friends, here, _safe_ in his arms when they have been so long separated by adversity and fear.

His friends are his power, and so his power should be used — _always—_ for his friends. That’s what he promised, so many years ago, when the Keyblade materialized for the first time in his small and untested hands. Maybe he promised it long before _that,_ when Ventus trusted him enough to keep his fragile heart safe—when Aqua trusted him to protect Riku, no matter the cost to himself.

His friends are his power, and so his friends are the most important thing in all the worlds. They’re more important than Kingdom Hearts, more important than even his own life. That’s what he tells himself, at least, when he has to force his hands to re-materialize as if he’s summoning his Keyblade. It’s what he tells himself when Riku stares at him for a moment too long in badly veiled concern, or when his mother grasps at his shoulders with shaking hands and asks him whether he’s home for good.

“I promise!” he says, and slaps on the smile everyone expects of him, even as he feels the emptiness settle in his chest like an anchor.

(He doesn't know whether the smile's convincing, anymore, but he has no way of checking. Every time he looks for his reflection in the mirror or in the gentle ocean waves, it's missing, as if he's already faded away.) 

* * *

It's hard to remember what a peaceful life is like, when your entire adolescence has been measured in the spaces between battles.

"Sora, where's your math homework?" his teacher asks, and he can only offer her a guilty shrug and a smile.

"Sora, I thought I asked you to do the dishes—"

"Sora, where were you at the party last night—?"

Sora Sora _Sora_ when it is all he can do to hold himself together; _Sora_ when, if he lets himself slip, he forgets what his name is at all; _SORA_ when sometimes, he wakes from a nightmare with a solid Keyblade held in his shimmering, translucent hand—

Sora who was never named Master for his blatant disregard of the rules, for the weakness in his heart, for his inability to see danger even when it's right in front of his nose, for the fact that he had to be saved from Xehanort's clutches despite the fact that he's saved them all —

But Yen Sid was right, in the end, wasn't he? He broke all the rules to get Kairi back because he was selfish, because he _didn't care_ so long as he got what he wanted, and now he's paying the price as he watches himself crumble to pieces.

Yen Sid was right, and Sora knows he can tell no one what is happening because Riku and Kairi would blame themselves, and the others would tell him that _they told him so,_ and all the rest—his mother and Selphie and Tidus and Wakka—they wouldn't understand. They— they still don't know where he and the others went when they disappeared, and Sora feels, sometimes, a desperate need to tell them the truth. He doesn't care about the world order. He doesn't even care about making Yen Sid or the King mad.

But every time the words almost leave his lips, he imagines his mother's eyes welling up with tears; he imagines the horror blooming on Tidus' face; he imagines the destruction of their worldview only weeks (days? minutes?) before he is to disappear forever.

He cannot do it.

He is selfish but not so selfish as to burden them all with _this,_ and so he suffers in silence, and plasters on his signature smile, and hopes beyond hope that _someone_ will notice the way his walls and his masks are falling to pieces before their very eyes.

* * *

It’s been a month since he brought Kairi home, and every day that he wakes up is a miracle unto itself.

His mother squints at him a little more than he’s comfortable with, and Riku keeps asking him if he’s all right, but he is resolute in his decision to lie. They make it easy, even, when they never push back against his flimsy excuses.

Every morning is a miracle, but every morning, it's a little more difficult to pull himself into the present and into the world around him.

The King sends a letter, and the sight of that signature wax seal in his mother's hands sends his heart racing in a way typically reserved for battle. "It's for you," she says brightly, her eyes creased in a smile as she hands the letter out toward him— but then she falters. "Sora? What's wrong?"

The last time the King sent him a letter, he almost fell to Xehanort's clutches, and Riku passed his exam while Sora failed so, _so_ utterly. If something new and terrifying has come up then, suddenly, Sora wants nothing to do with it. Chirithy told him that he has little time left, and (selfishly) he wants to spend it on his home world, with his family, with his friends from before his universe was torn asunder.

(No matter the fact that he has a dozen unread texts from Riku and Kairi, asking whether he wants to go out this weekend. No matter the fact that Selphie has long given up on dragging him to the mainland to go shopping, and even Tidus' worry shines through when they're in the same room for more than five minutes.)

(He’s _fine._ And if he's dying, then he thinks he has the right to decide what to do with the time he has left.)

The Sora of a month ago would balk at his reasoning— would shout encouragement, would demand he stand with his feet beneath him and do whatever it takes to protect his friends. But the Sora of today is— he is _tired,_ and every moment of his life, it is all he can do to keep himself from fading away completely. Every night he kisses his mother, and every night he sends his friends a text to say he loves them, because he fully expects not to wake up the next morning.

If the King needs something more from him when he has already given so much, then he will have to come and take it for himself. Sora abandons his mother in the kitchen, tries and fails to ignore her baffled face, and shuts himself in his room.

His hands are shaking, and no matter how hard he tries, his fingertips will not stop flickering in and out of focus. 

* * *

"Sora? Can I come in?"

It's scarce minutes later that his mother calls out to him from the hallway. Before he can wave her off, the door creaks as she eases it open, a torn envelope and unfolded letter in one hand.

He can't quite react fast enough— the Keyblade he's been trying desperately to maintain disappears in a flash of sparks. His entire hand goes with it for several agonizing seconds before he finally wills it back into existence.

She _stares_ at him, her jaw gone slack, the letter fluttering, forgotten, to the floor. "Honey?"

"Hey, Mom," he says, and tries for a reassuring smile for maybe half a moment before his composure crumples.

She's upon him in an instant, gathering him up into her arms without a second thought. But the feeling of her arms around him is somehow distant, like he's experiencing it through a bubble. Like his body, in preparation for what is to come, has already forgotten how to feel—

He hasn't cried like this since— _(since the timeline that never happened)_ in a long time, and the thought only makes him grip his mother tighter, trying desperately to absorb what warmth he can. Her grip grows tighter still, one hand threading through his hair, and he sobs again, desperate and beyond control.

"Sora," she says again, after several moments, quieter. "What just happened?"

He breathes deeply, shuddering, trying and failing to get his emotions under control. He isn't ready for this. He isn't ready to tell _anyone_ this, let alone _her,_ but she saw his Keyblade and his hand and so —

"Please don't freak out," he says, his voice cracking, and he thinks it is this that makes her hold him all the tighter. "Um, some stuff happened. While we were gone. And…"

He swallows, here, and his mother hesitates before pulling away, just enough to look him in the eye. "Sora?" she whispers, and he loses what small composure he might have left.

"I think I might be dying." 

* * *

The letter, as it turns out, is a request to host a party at Destiny Islands, celebrating the end of the war and their triumphant return to peacetime.

Why they can’t have it at Disney Castle, or Traverse Town, or even the Land of Departure— Sora does not know. But Riku and Kairi respond immediately in the affirmative, when he sends them a text. They’re clearly delighted at the idea, that Sora is taking the initiative, and he doesn’t have the heart to correct them.

(He gives himself a paper cut on the edge of the King’s formal stationery, but he doesn’t notice until he smears blood all over his friend's signature.)

His mom’s barely let him out of her sight since he told her about the past three years of his life, the years where he changed from a boy to a teenager with far too much weighing on his shoulders and far too little support with which to fix it. “I didn’t tell the others,” he tells her, and her grip on his hand tightens though he can still barely feel the pressure. “It’s— it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Now that Xehanort’s gone…”

But it _does_ matter, she insists in a way that stutters Sora’s breath and clogs his throat. It matters because he is Sora, her _son,_ and where did he learn to think that his own survival was secondary to everyone else's?

"I was the only one who could do it," he insists, choking on his tears and trying his damnedest to feel his mother's shaking shoulders beneath his hands. "Kairi was— she was _gone,_ Mom, and we couldn't come home without her, and I could _do something about it—"  
_

She opens her mouth, but only something high and keening passes her lips. He's pulled into another hug, her long hair brushing against his numb face. "My little warrior," she whispers, and he reaches to pull her tighter.

"I saved them all," he says, just as quietly, and she shakes her head.

"Why couldn't you worry about saving yourself, too?"

.

.

.

.

(The next week, Sora tells her, is when his friends will come to visit the islands. "We'll stay on the play island," he says, and it does nothing to dispel the twisting knot in her gut, "but I'll be out most of the day."

She can't deny him this, not when the bags under his eyes only continue to deepen. Not when she's caught him focusing too hard on a hand or a foot, _willing it back into existence,_ and the thought makes her sick, that her little boy—

(Is she going to forget him, like she did for that year that feels, now, like a fever dream? Sora confesses that he does not know, and he refuses point-blank to ask someone who might know more.

She finds herself taking photographs with him, writing notes to herself in a journal, reminding her of her son. In case she is forced to forget. In case— )

Sora is fading, and now that she knows to look for it, it is obvious and painful. His smile is brittle and it looks _stretched_ over his face, like his skin can't quite contain him, like his _heart_ and his _light_ and everything that makes him _Sora_ are already straining at the bounds of his mortal body. Her little boy is fading into the sunlight, is crumbling like so many grains of sand beneath her feet, and all she can do is hold him tight and pray for a miracle that she knows will never come.)

* * *

(The next week, when he goes out to meet his friends, she kisses his forehead, and tells him to be safe, and nearly hugs the life out of him.

His smile is warm and his eyes are kind as he promises to do his best.)

.

.

.

.

"Sora, are you okay?"

Kairi is holding his hand, but he can't feel much of anything anymore. He knows everyone is on the beach behind him, laughing like everything is right in the world again—laughing like they're all, finally, safe. He knows they're there but he can't hear them anymore; the static in his ears blocks out everything but Kairi's voice.

It's good, he thinks. He doesn't want to miss any part of this conversation.

He doesn't answer immediately, too focused on trying to feel the warmth of her hand. She asks again, a little louder this time. "You know you can tell me if there's something wrong, right?"

He does know this. He knows this better than anything else in the world. And that is why he had to lie: Kairi and Riku would have torn all the worlds apart to save him, if they could, but his cards have already been dealt.

(His vision is growing worse. He wonders distantly how they'll all react, when he's finally gone.)

 _(It was worth it._ He's scared, _terrified_ even, of what comes next. But Kairi is yet beside him, and that makes his fate that much easier to bear.)

"I know," he says, and tilts his head toward her with a smile. He sees her twitch, sees the muscles in her arm tense as her grip on his hand grows tighter.

He stops trying so hard to stay solid, and sees her overbalance, a little, as her hand falls those extra few inches through his own. She looks down, and makes a little noise in her throat like she's choking back a scream.

"Sora?"

There are tears on her face, and she grasps for his arms as he turns to stardust. "It'll be okay," he says, his smile widening, and—


End file.
